


Magnets and Dust

by graceling_in_a_suit



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Harry is a roomba, M/M, Robot Harry, Robot Louis, This fic is very silly and cute yall I'm not sorry, and Louis is a tin., mentions of a master/slave dynamic (bc harry is a ROOMBA)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 13:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19831453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceling_in_a_suit/pseuds/graceling_in_a_suit
Summary: Harry moved closer, ignoring the red flashing of his LED display and the ever-present announcement,foreign object, foreign object.He wanted to read it. He wanted to understand it.To his dismay, the only letters he could make out were,l o u i s,spaced far enough apart that Harry knew they weren’t supposed to form a word.Or: the story of Roombrry and Tinouis.





	Magnets and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a Wordplay prompt challenge for the prompt "tin". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/tin_tin), and to see all fics written as part of the challenge (including years 1 and 2), [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works). You can also find the masterpost for this year’s challenge [here](https://wordplayfics.tumblr.com/post/185709101043/wordplay-2019-every-week-for-five-weeks-a-prompt).
> 
> I know what you're thinking. You're sat there, reading the tags and summary, and you're thinking, "El. You absolute madlad." And you'd be right. 
> 
> But I want it known that this is also Sus's fault. And the fault of [this](https://harryseyebrows.tumblr.com/post/186164052299/harry-does-have-big-roomba-energy-idk-how-he-just) tumblr post.

Harry liked being on the second floor. Out of all the four floors, it was by far the best, no question about it. The curtains were always drawn back—unlike in the laboratory or the bedrooms or the kitchen—and Harry’s visual processors found it so much easier to tell the difference between a hazard and a ball of lint. 

He was happily zooming along, chewing up dust and the occasional scrap of paper, avoiding the scary room with the hole in the floorboards, and working his way around in a pattern he’d made up. He liked making up patterns—he’d gotten so bored of the same zigzag every day.

Today he was drawing a smiley face, like the one on his favourite magnet. He’d collected three magnets so far, all rescued from under the fridge. He knew he was supposed to put them back—his master had given him arms for a reason—but he liked them, and his master didn’t appreciate them enough. So he’d picked them up and placed them on his little disc-shaped body, tucked his arms back into their compartment, and gone on his merry way. 

Harry was partway through the left eye of his smiley face when his visual processors caught sight of an anomaly. 

_ Foreign object,  _ they told him, and Harry’s LED display blinked red. 

He stopped in the middle of the floor, staring at it. He was too scared to move at first, but when the object—a small, metal cylinder—did nothing but sit there on the ground, Harry moved closer. 

The object was older than anything else on the floor; Harry could see rust creeping up its edges. When he was only a metre away from it, he recognised it as a tin—like the peaches and beans from the pantry. 

He beeped sadly at it once he saw that its wrapper was too faded to read. 

Darting closer still, Harry reached out one of his arms. The tin didn’t react when Harry nudged it gently. It simply rolled further away, revealing an underside with more unrecognizable letters.

Harry moved closer, ignoring the red flashing of his LED display and the ever-present announcement,  _ foreign object, foreign object.  _

He wanted to read it. He wanted to understand it. 

To his dismay, the only letters he could make out were,  _ l o u i s,  _ spaced far enough apart that Harry knew they weren’t supposed to form a word. 

And yet, it was such a  _ nice  _ word. Louis. 

“Oouuiii,” Harry trilled, as close as he could get with his minimal speech ability. 

When it didn’t say anything back, he beeped a soft goodbye to it. Floors to clean, and all that. His master would be home soon, and Harry wanted to be finished with his work and in his charging station before she could spot him and take away his magnets. 

Harry was cleaning the third floor the next day, darting around all the machinery, trying to keep his metaphorical head down. His master was home today, tinkering around with circuits and computers, making more friends for the household. 

Harry liked friends, of course he did. But most of the time they weren’t what the master wanted, and Harry didn’t like to see her angry. 

So it was a relief, then, to find himself back on the second floor the next day, even if it meant the loss of his magnets. 

His master had stopped by his charging station this morning to pick him up and take him downstairs—Harry could manage that on his own, but he daren’t say so—and she’d muttered to herself about how clumsy he was and brushed his magnet collection off his side. 

She hadn’t picked them up, which gave Harry hope that he could find them again tonight. If no one else had taken them, that was. 

But now he was on the second floor. And second floor meant light, and lots of old furniture, and books on bookshelves, and a new friend. 

He zoomed past Louis three times in the morning, and each time the tin didn’t react. But Harry was stubborn, and he kept trying. 

In the afternoon, he devised a much sneakier plan. He rerouted his course a little, and he ignored the beeping and the  _ foreign object, foreign object,  _ and he bumped right into Louis on his way past.

Perhaps he bumped too hard, because the tin was sent rolling along the floor. 

Harry trilled in distress, abandoning his route and chasing after him. He managed to catch up just before Louis was sent bouncing down the staircase, intercepting him with his body and using his arms to stand him back upright. 

As Harry got him settled back on his… feet, he noticed something strange about his friend. 

“Ooouuis?” he tried to ask, tilting the tin towards his visual processing unit. 

That confirmed it, then; Louis was almost completely hollow. He didn’t have a lid like the tins in the pantry did, and there definitely weren’t any peaches inside him. Instead, there was a small circuit board, some wires, and a few other pieces of technology that Harry hadn’t been programmed to recognise. 

“Ouiii….oo,” Harry righted the tin again, nudged him until he was safely out of the way of the stairs, then sped away to clean the dust under the curtains for a while. He felt so embarrassed; he hadn’t known Louis was a bot like him, he’d just thought he was a cute little friend. 

But now Harry knew he was a cute potential  _ boyfriend,  _ like the ones on the screens that his master left playing sometimes. 

Like the ones on his second favourite magnet: two fishes touching noses. 

Harry wondered if Louis would want to touch noses with him. He spun around so that he could catch a glimpse of the sun shining off Louis’ metal. 

_ Definitely not,  _ Harry decided. Louis hadn’t said a word to him yet, not even when he’d nearly knocked him down the stairs. 

Harry would have to up his game if he wanted to be good enough for a fashionable tin about town like  _ Louis.  _

Unfortunately, it was another week before Harry got to clean the second floor again. 

His master had a very loud, very scary party the next night, which meant Harry and most of the other bots she’d been working on were on the first floor all day, getting everything ready. 

Then Harry had to endure several hours of being passed around, people oohing and ahhing at his arms and his distressed beeping. 

The day after that was much better; the party had left a lot of mess for him to clean up. He had to empty himself five times before he’d even made it past the first room, it was  _ exhilarating.  _

Or, it was until his master had caught sight of him, scowled, and bundled him up in her arms. 

“When did you get those magnets back, H2779? I thought I...hmmm.” 

And then the next thing Harry knew, he was awake and his internal time monitor was informing him he’d missed five days. 

“You can keep them, don’t worry,” his master said, not turning away from something she was typing into her computer as Harry poked at his side to check if his magnets were still there. 

Harry beeped happily, then zoomed to the edge of the desk. His master didn’t tell him to stay, so he used his arms to climb down, then sped off towards the stairs. 

Louis was sitting just where Harry had left him. 

“Ouuuis?” Harry trilled, brushing some dust off of him. 

The tin didn’t acknowledge him.

Harry programmed a cleaning route in the shape of a sad face, then sped off. 

An idea occurred to him a few hours later as he chewed up some flakes of paint that had come loose from the wall. 

What if his friend just needed some motivation to talk to him? 

Harry wasn’t the best at coming up with ideas—it was only recently that he’d figured out  _ how  _ to come up with ideas—so he couldn’t really be blamed when the plan he devised involved zooming into the  _ worst  _ room on the second floor and letting himself fall right into the wonky floorboard that the little voice in his head always warned him about.  _ Hazard! Hazard! Hazard!  _ It said, and Harry didn’t have to pretend to be scared. 

He revved his wheels, but the angle was too awkward for him to get back up again. He trilled and beeped and whistled as loud as he could—why had he thought this was a good idea? Just to impress the cutest bot he’d ever seen?  _ Yes, Harry, very impressive, everyone loves an idiot that gets himself stuck on  _ purpose.

After thirty seconds of his saddest, most scared noises, Harry’s audio processor picked something up. He spun around, cameras searching and searching until—Louis! There he was, rolling along the floor on his side, speeding towards Harry. 

“Ouis!” 

Louis was coming so quickly, quicker than Harry could move. He was coming… way too quickly, Harry realised. He jerked his wheels backwards and forwards, trying to get himself unstuck from the hole in the floorboards before Louis could run right into him. 

_ Blam.  _ Harry teetered on the edge of the hole, rocking further in where before he’d been teetering on the edge. He yelled—a single, loud note—then he was plunged into the dark, dusty space underneath the floorboards. 

Before his visual processors could adjust to the lack of light, he felt something drop on top of him from above, jostling his magnets. Harry extended his arms frantically, using one to organise the magnets on his side and the other to feel around on his dome. He couldn’t see what was up there, but the second his arm came into contact with hard, curved metal he knew it was his friend. 

“Louis!” 

He tugged the tin off of him, setting him on the ground and patting his side in concern. They were both covered in dust, but Louis seemed otherwise unscathed. 

Just as Harry was about to use his arms to lift them both out of the hole, Louis stirred. 

Harry watched, rapt, as a soft rumbling noise came from his core, and a light flicked on from inside him. It shone so brightly out of the empty space where his lid should have been, illuminating the area they were in. 

Harry beeped a happy tune, visual processors going wild as they processed all the new information around him. He picked Louis up excitedly, spinning round in a circle with him as he took it all in: hundreds of little gadgets, and circuit boards and rusty pieces of metal. There were springs, and gears, and children’s toys, and collections of things Harry had only dreamed of—stamps, screws, coloured fabric, stones, glass,  _ magnets. _

“Louis!” Harry said it again, just because he could (and because he’d figured out  _ how).  _ “Louis!”

The tin wriggled in his hand, and then something started to emerge from behind the collection of forks. Harry froze as he took it in; he could barely believe his eyes. 

It was another  _ him.  _ It had a cute, round body, with three wheels and a camera and a microphone, just like he did. But… it looked older than Harry—cruder in it’s design, and scratched up on its sides. 

“Who is Louis?” it asked. 

Harry moved himself backwards, suddenly shy in the presence of such a gorgeous specimen. It could  _ talk,  _ properly talk; how was Harry supposed to measure up?

The other him beeped questioningly, and it was such a familiar sound—though a bit higher pitched than Harry’s own beeps, perhaps his speaker had been damaged—that Harry found himself answering. 

“Looouiss,” he said slowly, waving the light-making tin in his hand. 

“Oh,” said the other him. It made a noise like his master did when she saw him running into walls. 

Harry backed further away. 

“No, it’s ok—it’s just, that’s not…”

Harry brought the tin back towards him, placing it on his dome. “Louis,” he said, sharp and protective. 

The other him paused, and then the tin in Harry’s arms started vibrating. Harry tried to keep a hold of him, but Louis shot out of his grip and towards the other him before he could stop it.

Harry watched as the other him’s LED display flickered blue. The light inside the tin blinked on and off again, then Louis spun around in a circle, and the other him scooted closer to Harry as it did so. 

“D’you see?” 

Harry let out a short, confused blip. 

“I made him. He’s… me,” the other him said. 

Harry focused on the tin, then on the other him, struggling to understand. “Louis?” he asked, nudging forwards. 

“Um. Yeah, I guess so?” Louis answered.  _ Louis,  _ the handsome cleaning bot who lived under the floorboards and collected things and  _ built things. _ Louis _.  _ He was so much better than Harry had thought. 

Harry sped towards Louis— _ foreign object, foreign object— _ and darted around him in a happy circle. He picked a splinter off Louis’ side, tucked a loose wire back in its place, and bumped his LED display against his. 

“Hi!” Louis said, making that noise again— _ laughter,  _ Harry remembered. “I like your magnets.” 

Harry trilled happily. Then, he let out a mournful whistle. 

“What’s wrong?” Louis asked. The tin rolled against his side as if to comfort him. 

Harry used his arm to point back through the hole in the floorboards, then to himself. Louis still seemed confused, so he sucked up a trail of dust to demonstrate what he meant, leaving a clean line in the floor behind him. 

“Oh, you don’t have to do that anymore.” Louis intercepted his path. “You could stay down here, with me? If you wanted?” 

Harry could…  _ stay _ ?

He folded his arms back into their compartment and tucked his wheels away, making himself a stationary disc on the floor as he thought about it. 

He  _ did  _ like cleaning, but he also liked magnets.   
  
And there was lots of both to be had down here. With Louis. 

“What’s your name?” Louis asked, followed by a soft beeping. It sounded plaintive, almost lonely. 

Harry extended his wheels again and rolled over to him. “Aheii,” he tried to say, then blipped in frustration. 

“You could tell me in binary?” Louis offered, nudging against Harry’s side gently. 

Harry bounced excitedly, rattling off his name in blips and beeps. 

“Harry?” Louis tried. 

Harry whistled, spinning around in a circle and nearly dislodging his magnets. 

Louis laughed. He extended a single arm— _ he’s so amazing, he’s got secret arms,  _ Harry thought—and straightened the magnets before they could slip off Harry’s side. 

“Come on, Harry,” Louis said, wheeling off into the unknown, tin alongside to light the way. “I’ve got so much to show you!”

Harry spared a single glance at the light streaming in from the hole in the floorboards, then he was speeding off after Louis. 

He was sure his master would understand; Harry had a boyfriend now, and Harry’s boyfriend had  _ so much to show him.  _

  
  
  
  


The end. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to yell at me in the comments, but I will not be accepting constructive criticism at this time, since we can all tell that this story is perfect. There's a post over on my [tumblr](https://graceling-in-a-suit.tumblr.com/post/186343362515/magnets-and-dust-by-gracelinginasuit-pairing) if you wanna check it out! Have a lovely night. xx


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